The role of natural gas in smart grids

PowerMatching City (see ref. (Bliek et al., 2010)) is a living lab smart grid demonstration that shows the feasibility of a market based smart grid optimization methodology. It allows simultaneous optimization of multiple goals of the various stakeholders in a smart grid: in-home optimization, commercial optimization (VPP operation), congestion management and Integration and Valorization of renewable energy. The solution is based on local distributed intelligence and controlled by software agents at a device level that are coupled via local markets. These local markets are combined to a single central market that is coupled via the trading room of RWE-Essent to the existing markets like the imbalance and APX-ENDEX. The demonstration show how gas applications (micro cogeneration and hybrid heat pump systems) and gas infrastructure can play an essential role in smart grids and form a cost efficient cornerstone in balancing our networks when intermittent renewable energy sources are deployed on a large scale.